


Compulsion

by praxibetelix



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Because I can, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Insomnia, OCD Rocket, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 11:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10852893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/praxibetelix/pseuds/praxibetelix
Summary: Mantis settles in with the Guardians, and Rocket asks a favor.





	Compulsion

Stars are hanging like lanterns outside the windows of the Milano, and Mantis sits in her quarters, brushing the leaves from the street fair out of her hair. The Guardians had visited seemingly a thousand vendors and games under this solar system's two dusty yellow suns, and seen a thousand musicians, jugglers, and mesmerizing dancers - women in every size and color whose soft clothing and bodies spun and flowed in synchronicity. One, with downy blue feathers and six crystalline eyes, had picked Mantis out of the crowd and set a messy crown of multicolored vines on her head, and she'd felt tingly inside all day.

She and Drax had won a sizable pile of prizes at the fair games, and most strikingly, he'd reacted with delight and pride whenever Mantis mastered a new skill. It was bizarre to be complimented on changing something about herself. "Never change, Mantis," Ego had always said, patting her shoulder, and she'd feel a muffled terror that sweet, ditzy, and obedient was all she was and all she would ever be.

Now, her bones ache with an unfamiliar, content exhaustion, and she's undoing the tiny side braid she'd put in her hair after seeing Gamora do it when she hears someone knock.

She's never heard a knock at that height not accompanied by yelling, but she opens the door.

There's Rocket, looking less like a whatever-he-is and more like a mangy, exhausted throw rug.

"Hey, Mantis," he says, claws digging into his arms. Blood trickles from a few places on his pelt where he's been pulling out fur. "Uh. You know that sleep thing you do to Drax?" He lowers his voice to a rough approximation of his teammate's. " _Knock me out, bug lady._ That."

"And to Peter too, when he has nightmares about our father," Mantis says, nodding.

Rocket tilts his head and makes the face people make when they want Mantis to infer something. She has no idea what.

He sighs, twisting his fur in his hands, and looks down at the floor. "Could you ... maybe do it on me?" Watching Rocket try to sincerely ask for a favor is like watching a fish try to walk on land. Mantis feels an odd pity for him. She kneels down and places a hand between his scruffy ears.

"No pokin' around in my head though, got it?"

Mantis really tries not to, but can't help recoiling at the sudden ache of cybernetic metal in her back and wave of dull, sick panic in her stomach. She feels _contaminated_ , wanting to pull out fur she doesn't have and check the mechanisms of guns she doesn't understand, as many times as it takes until the fear is shoved down enough to be manageable.

She's in a ball on the floor, hugging her knees until Rocket's feelings drain out of her, and Rocket doesn't look at her.

"... Yeah, don't tell the others," the little animal mutters, claws running deep scratches into his pelt, his tone more of a plea than the usual threat.

Mantis remembers the traps Rocket sets for intruders any place the Guardians stay the night, how obsessively he checks them, prepared for every possible awful thing that could happen to his friends. She thinks about Gamora sleeping with a sword by her bed, and Kraglin staring out the windows turning his arrow over and over in his hands, and Peter waking up screaming with visions of hideous blue tumors consuming the ship, and she looks at the floor too. "I was raised since I was a larva by an insane planet man who wanted to consume the whole galaxy," she says at last. "No one here is half as crazy as him."

A little of the tension goes out of Rocket's shoulders. "But you won't tell them?"

"I won't." She reaches uncertainly towards his head again, and he doesn't move away from the contact.

"You were really a ... larva? Like a little, tiny worm? Or is that just .. jus' ... y'know ..." Rocket slumps over, dead asleep. Mantis carries him back to his nest of hoarded blankets, and doesn't let him fall.


End file.
